Every Woman Love[d] a Fascist

Apparently, it wasn’t just Sylvia Plath who gave the side-eye to her father. His old FBI files have been unearthed, revealing a resounding “meh.” Who among us would have gotten really excited about buying Liberty Bonds, anyway?

The FBI files, headed “Pro-German”, recorded that, as an “alien enemy”, Otto lost teaching positions, having graduated from Northwestern College and the University of Washington, Seattle. Later however, he did obtain positions.

In one passage, they noted: “He has stated … that he will return to Germany after the War, and seems to have assumed a rather pro-German attitude towards [it] on account of losing his positions.” But later they commented he had “a rather indifferent attitude” and mentioned a denial of saying he would go back to Germany after the war.

He also told investigators that his parents came to the US “because of the better conditions” but defended his homeland, saying: “Some things are rotten in Germany, but not all; that the German people and their character is not altogether rotten.”

MY father’s mostly-performative communist sympathies are believed to have kept my uncle out of the Canadian variant of the Secret Service, but have not yet inspired any overrated works of confessional poetry.

Not yet.